Also 7 -ick, 7– -ique. [ad. L. clīnic-us, a. Gr. κλῑνικ-ός of or pertaining to a bed, f. κλῑνη a bed, f. κλῑνειν to cause to lean, slope, recline, etc.]
A. sb.
1. One who is confined to bed by sickness or infirmity; a bedridden person, an indoor hospital patient.
a. 1626. Vaughan, Direct. for Health (1633), 5. The childish doubts of cowardly Clinickes.
1651. Jer. Taylor, Clerus Dom., 10. Confession of sins by the clinick or sick person.
a. 1711. Ken, Edmund, Poet. Wks. 1721, II. 123. Clinicks from gracious God find sure Relief.
1887. E. Berdoe, St. Bernard’s, 213. With these provisos, you are free to roam at large, my friend, over the bodies of any of my clinics.
2. Ch. Hist. One who deferred baptism until the death-bed, in the belief that there could be no atonement for sins committed after that sacrament.
1666. Sancroft, Lex Ignea, 41. We are all Clinicks in this point; would fain have a Baptism in Reserve, a Wash for all our Sins, when we cannot possibly commit any more.
1819. Pantologia, III. Clinics … signified those who received baptism on their death-beds.
† 3. A clinical physician. Obs.
1751. Chambers, Cycl., s.v. Clinic. Clinicus is also used for a physician—In regard, physicians are much conversant about the beds of the sick. Clinic is now seldom used but for a quack; or for an empirical nurse, who pretends to have learned the art of curing diseases by attending on the sick.
B. adj.
1. Of or pertaining to the sick-bed; bed-ridden. Clinic baptism: private baptism administered on the couch to sick or dying persons. Clinic convert: one converted when sick or dying.
1626. Donne, Serm., lxxviii. 802. Be thou therefore St. Cyprian’s Peripatetique and not his Clinique-Christian, a walking and not a Bedrid Christian.
1672. Cave, Prim. Chr., I. x. (1673), 294. Clinic baptism accounted less perfect.
1679. J. Goodman, Penit. Pardoned, II. v. (1713), 236. The Clinick or Death-bed repentance.
1872. O. Shipley, Gloss. Eccl. Terms, 164. Aspersion was allowed of old in clinic baptism.
2. = CLINICAL 1.
1751. Chambers, Cycl., s.v. Clinic, Le Clerc observes, that Esculapius was the first who exercised the Clinic medicine.
